George Bingham, 8th Earl of Lucan

George Charles Bingham, 8th Earl of Lucan (born 21 September 1967), styled Lord Bingham until 2016, is a British hereditary peer.

Lucan is the only son of Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, and Veronica Mary Duncan, and a descendant of George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, famous for his role in the Crimean War, leading the Cavalry Division which included the Heavy Brigade and the Light Brigade, the latter of which was involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade..

Lucan was educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His career as a merchant banker included banking, country and credit risk and structured finance. Beginning at Kleinwort Benson in 1989, he left Dresdner Kleinwort Benson as Head of UK and European Structured Finance in 1999. Subsequently he joined Bailey Coates Asset Management, a long-short, event-driven equity fund that raised $2 billion. He left in 2004, some months before the fund's closure. Since that time, he has worked as a freelance consultant and researcher in a variety of structured finance opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa.

Lucan's father, the 7th Earl, famously disappeared in November 1974 after the murder of the family nanny Sandra Rivett. The 8th Earl does not believe his father was responsible for Sandra Rivett's death.^[1]

After almost twenty years, the High Court of Justice gave leave for the 7th Earl to be "sworn dead" by his trustees in order that his estate might be settled. Subsequently, in 1998, Lord Bingham (as he then was), supported by sworn statements from his entire family (excluding his mother), and by the Metropolitan Police, made application for his father to be declared dead for House of Lords purposes. However, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, was unable to issue him with a writ of summons to the Lords without a death certificate for his father.^[2] In October 2015, one year after the Presumption of Death Act came into effect in October 2014,^[3] Bingham started another bid to have his father declared dead.^[4] On 3 February 2016, a High Court judge issued a death certificate for his father, allowing him to inherit the Earldom.^[5]

On 23 May 2016, Lucan formally petitioned the House of Lords to have his succession to the titles recognised.^[6] On 7 June, the House declared that he had established his claims to the titles and he was directed to be entered on the register of hereditary peers maintained in connection with the House of Lords Act 1999 by virtue of his subsidiary title Baron Bingham in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.^[7]

Lucan has two sisters: Lady Frances Bingham (born 1964), and Lady Camilla Bingham QC (born 1970), who married Michael Bloch QC in 1998. He married Anne-Sofie Foghsgaard (known as "Fie"; b. 1977) at St George's, Hanover Square, London, on 14 January 2016. She is the daughter of Danish industrialist Lars Foghsgaard, the owner of the Spott Estate in East Lothian, Scotland.

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